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Europe remains the world's biggest development donor – €74.4 billion in 2018

12 April 2019 11:09 (UTC +04:00)

Europe remains the world's biggest development donor with €74.4 billion in 2018, ONA reports citing the latest report on preliminary figures for 2018 published by OECD's Development Assistance Committe (OECD-DAC).

According to the report, the European Union and its Member States continued to be the world's leading provider of official development assistance in 2018 and stepped up their efforts directed at developing countries.

Collective assistance from the European Union and its Member States amounted to more than €74.4 billion in 2018. European development assistance represents almost 57% of the total global development assistance by all OECD-DAC donors.

Preliminary 2018 figures indicate a slight decrease in overall collective Official Development Assistance (ODA).

This decrease is due to a significant reduction in in-donor refugee spending in 2018 compared to previous years. Excluding in-donor refugee costs, the EU and its Member States have stepped up their development cooperation efforts by 4% compared with 2017.

Compared to previous years, the number of people arriving in Europe decreased down significantly. In consequence, in-donor refugee spending – which aims at assisting refugees and asylum-seekers in Europe during the first year of their stay, covering food, shelter or training – has decreased as well, by €3.3 billion – a 32% decrease compared to 2017.

Collective EU and Member States' official development assistance represents 0.47% of the EU Gross National Income (GNI), significantly above the 0.21% average of the non-EU members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

In 2018, four EU Member States provided 0.7% or more of their Gross National Income in Official Development Assistance: Denmark, Luxembourg, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In four Member States (France, Hungary, Malta and Sweden), the Official Development Assistance to GNI ratio increased by more than 0.01 percentage points between 2017 and 2018, while it decreased by at least 0.01 percentage points in twelve Member States.